


please don't leave me with another regret

by DiscoCritic



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Gen, Guilt, Making Bad Decisions, Taking Risks, and those same little children often know a lot more than you think they do, being sappy, sometimes little children are good at comforting sad people, various injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22020106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscoCritic/pseuds/DiscoCritic
Summary: first, party poison makes sure the girl knows how much she's loved, and then he takes a risk that doesn't work out like he'd hoped—and the consequences of it will affect his whole crew for the rest of their lives.
Relationships: Party Poison & The Girl
Comments: 25
Kudos: 66





	please don't leave me with another regret

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this twice because fucking google docs offline lost it the first time. also, it kinda feels like i used the word "decision" in here over fifty fucking times... but that's okay. went on a long road trip and was able to get a lot of writing done, so here's a bonus story in celebration of the new year!

It's a day as normal as any other. They're driving through Zone Three, the air conditioner rattling violently as it gives everything it has. The girl's in the backseat between Jet Star and the Kobra Kid, doodling on scrap paper she found somewhere at their last stop, and Fun Ghoul’s in the passenger seat fanning himself with a brochure for some old amusement park that shut down years ago. Party Poison is at the wheel.

This is a quiet ride; the radio's off and no one's talking, all their energy sapped by the scorching overhead sun. Just breathing causes beads of sweat to roll down Poison's face, and he's already shedded his beloved jacket to cool off.

It's these kind of moments, surrounded by his gang and the girl, driving mindlessly down never-ending stretches of road, where Poison gets a chance to let his thoughts wander and just simply _think_. Each time one of these rare quiet opportunities arises, he's got a new issue to ponder. Last time it was whether he'd have enough secret carbons saved up to buy Kobra Kid a birthday gift. This time it's something heavier, and the subject matter is one he can't keep to himself.

"Girlie," he says, licking his lips and adjusting his grip on the steering wheel, "put your paper down for a second. There's something I wanna talk to ya about."

That's when the other guys subtly exchange glances and shift in their seats, furrowing their eyebrows the slightest bit and leaning forward to hear better. Poison breaking the silence on a road trip for something that's not shouting along with the radio is a foreign concept; they're as interested as the girl is to hear what he has to say.

She folds up her paper and tucks it inside her jacket, keeping a purple crayon in her hand to fiddle with while she listens. When she's ready, she crosses her ankles and looks up expectantly.

"You're gettin' older now," he begins, "and that's a good thing. Ya know survival stuff, like when to hide when the ghosties're after ya, or where the clean water wells are, but I hope you always know by now, uh, how much we love you."

Now _this_ , this is startling, so much so that Jet and Kobra turn to look at each to make sure they heard right. Poison suddenly turning sappy means one of three things: he’s dying, they're dying, or something else is going on.

“Yeah,” the girl says. “I know. I love ya too.”

He clears his throat. "I just want you to know, because there's, uh, there's a good chance that any one of us could die at any moment out here, and there might not be enough time for, um, for us to tell you that if that happens. It's just been on my mind, since there's been more news reports of gangs gettin' captured and ghosted on site. I just want you to know.”

"Yeah," she repeats.

"Good," Poison says, and that's the end of that conversation. Everything returns to normal, and the only things out of place are a couple of silent tears that no one notices rolling down behind Poison's sunglasses. 

~~~

Three days after that comes out the real reason Poison brought that conversation up. 

He waits until they've pulled off the side of Route Guano and started a small fire to keep warm. The girl's asleep in the backseat of the trans-am, close enough for them to keep tabs on her but far enough away that speaking in low voices won't wake her up. The oldest members of the Fabulous Four are in the middle of finishing their meager dinner of lukewarm ravioli straight from the container. Fun Ghoul puts his meal aside early, deciding he's sick of canned Italian food, and lights a cigarette instead. The smoke curls up into the air, visible only from the dim light of the fire.

Poison coughs once, twice, to earn the attention of his crewmates. They look at him and only see the twisting shadows cast onto the crevices of his face, giving him the appearance of a ghostly being. "There's somethin' I haven't told you," he says, and pauses, his hands gripping each other so tightly the blood flow almost gets cut off.

The other three wait. Jet and Kobra tilt their heads to the side at the same time as if they're being controlled by the same puppeteer.

"I didn't wanna say anything until I knew for sure. But Hot Chimp radioed me yesterday, she said it's true. There's gonna be a city raid tomorrow. A bunch of crews are going 'cause there's a couple warehouses with enough supplies to keep 'em alive for a year."

Ghoul flips his lighter through his fingers and glances at him. "You're not thinkin' about having _us_ go, are ya?" he says. “That’d be… I dunno, man. Seems pretty dangerous.”

Poison spreads his hands wide, looks at them with pleading eyes. "We're outta rations. One more meal an' then we have to start picking who gets to eat dinner each day. We don't have any extra water besides what's already in our bottles and it ain't gonna rain any time soon. Plus it's the time 'a year the bad strains of Zone flu come around again and the kid's not immune yet... we don't have medicine; you want her to have to ride it out on her own?"

“Poison…” Jet shakes his head, wrings his hands. “There’s gotta be a safer way to do this. We don’t have to go. We can find some other way.”

Poison stands up. “Look,” he says, and that’s when he re-assumes the leader position, head held high and back straight with hands clasped behind him. “You told me last year that you thought I should be the one making decisions, that I should be in charge because all of my ideas ended up working out. I know it sounds like a suicide mission. But what other opportunities are we gonna have? This might be our last relatively easy chance to score some supplies. Plus, there's the protection of other 'runners next to us during the initial break-in.”

“Are you forgetting that last time there was a city raid, five different crews got ghosted? _Five_ , Poison. What's the girl gonna do if we get dusted out there like them?” It’s the first and only time Kobra speaks.

Party Poison’s eyes flash. “And we could get dusted right _here_ in five minutes by a patrol. Just existing is a risk for us. We need to make the best of the opportunities we’re given, and as crew leader, my decision is that we take part in the raid tomorrow. The danger’s always a part of what we do; it should be a fact of life for us by now. We’re going.”

And that’s that. He knows no one dares challenge him when he’s like this. The decision is made, even if the other three don’t agree with it. In fact, they probably feel like he’s not thinking about the mission realistically, and that's just not true. He's thought long and hard about this. Participating in the raid is the best choice for them as a gang right now.

But that doesn’t mean their worries are without substance, either. Kobra was right when he pointed out that there’s a very good chance one or more of them won’t come out of the city alive.

They explain this to the girl in the simplest terms they can think of as soon as she wakes up. “We’re going to the city to get some stuff we need,” Jet Star tells her gently, wiping her dust-stained face with a damp washcloth, “and we’re gonna drop ya off with Dr. D for a day or so. You can probably play Pony at chess while we’re gone, see if they’ve gotten any better at not cheating.” She grins, and before they know it, it’s the next morning and they’re giving her goodbye hugs and promising to pick her up when they get back.

It’s very important, that “when.” Sometimes it's more realistic to say “if.”

The drive into the city is somber. They follow a pickup truck full of ‘joys in the back for nearly the whole ride since they’re both heading to the same destination, only splitting off when they reach the sign that states they’ve got ten miles left until reaching the city gates. The music is left turned down low to a station none of them really listen to. They’re all dressed in full Killjoy garb, too: masks and jackets on, guns holstered at their sides, bandannas pulled over their mouths and noses.

Poison sucks in a breath once they’ve blown through the main gates and officially enter Battery City. “Keep your soul in and the dust out,” he says, and after that he doesn’t say a word.

Jet crosses himself and kisses the beads on his wrist, whispering prayers for their safety and for the safety of every other zonerunner here. Kobra says a prayer of his own under his breath and asks only that his gun fire straight today. Ghoul stares ahead and neither says nor prays a single word. He’s not religious and he’s not feeling particularly talkative right now.

It’s not long before they’ve parked the car in an old alleyway, thrown a tarp from the trunk over it, and joined a group of at least seven other crews. Poison recognizes three gangs as a whole just by the colors they’re wearing, and six other individual Killjoys after he gets a closer look. The Fabulous Four blend right into the crowd and stand close together until it’s time to infiltrate SCARECROW Headquarters.

Poison crosses his arms, watching, waiting, seeing how everyone else is acting. Most seem nervous, some seem excited, and a few seem angry. The usual bunch of emotions before a firefight. He’s feeling them all at the same time.

He shifts his weight to the other leg and puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans, only to find a tightly-folded piece of faded paper. Carefully, he moves into the light, and unfolds the paper.

There’s a drawing inside on top of what used to be the sports section of a newspaper dated August 1998. A little stick figure with long, curly hair is in the center with four taller stick figures standing beside it. One of them has bright red crayon hair. Above their heads is a heart with a smiley face in it and the inscription, _“Party Poison: love you no mater what!!!_ ,” missing one of the "t"s in “matter.”

He smiles. She must've gotten it into his pocket without him noticing. He silently applauds her for her stealth, then tucks the paper back where he found it.

It's time. People have already started to move out in threes and fours, their masks on and their guns at the ready. He brushes his hand over his own in his holster and then gestures for the rest of the crew to follow him.

The first bomb goes off as he passes through the doorway.

After that, it becomes hard to make out certain details. He knows they hit two warehouses before alarms even started to go off. He knows he grabbed Kobra and handed him two boxes to run back to the car. He knows he turned around and the third warehouse was completely empty even though fifteen people had just been inside with him. He knows he hit the ground as the sky rained down above him. He knows he only laid there for a minute before nearly suffocating in the dust and debris, and he knows he ran outside to find Ghoul hacking up a lung with tears streaming down his face and a bloody gash along the curve of his smile. He knows they found Jet on the ground sixty feet away with his bandanna ripped off, lying on his back with two red handprints on either side of his neck and a hole shot through his eye. He knows he and Ghoul struggled to lift Jet and had to finally resort to half-dragging, half-carrying him back to the car, where Kobra lay unconscious against the front tire with a concussion and his arm snapped in two places.

He knows that for all the injuries his crewmates suffered, the only supplies they managed to get away with were a boxful of dried raisins, two rolls of paper towels, and three shirts too small for anybody but the girl to wear. He knows that between the three of them, they lost one eye and gained three different types of infections, a Chelsea smile, and a broken arm. And he knows that not a single drac, exterminator, or SCARECROW so much as looked at him that night.

And that's all he knows.

~~~

Party Poison's heart nearly shatters when he has to show Kobra the meager products of his pain, how all that suffering only amounted to one goddamn box of raisins. Party Poison's heart nearly shatters when he has to tell Ghoul that it's okay and that he shouldn't try to talk because he might fuck up his stitches. Party Poison's heart definitely shatters when he holds up that mirror to show Jet the remainder of his eye, when he sees the fear and horror on Jet's face, when Jet wakes up screaming every night after that for months.

And it's all his fault, isn't it? That mission was _his_ call. It was his choice to endanger the lives of his crew, his friends, his brother. And perhaps the worst part of it isn't that they're injured, because that happens all the time regardless of who decided what. The worst part of it might be the fact that while _they_ all suffered from at least two different wounds, _Poison_ emerged from the whole incident completely unscathed.

As long as the loss of his pride and honor doesn't count, that is.

Two weeks after the incident, when Ghoul is able to whisper, Kobra can sit up without getting dizzy, Jet is finally getting used to his eyepatch, and the twisting guilt in Poison's stomach is at last starting to subside, he takes the girl on a drive.

"I got your drawing the day of the raid," he says, holding the wheel with one hand and tapping his knee with the other. He keeps watching the girl kick her legs back and forth. She's never ridden in the front seat before, but he made an exception this time under the condition that she kept her seatbelt on while the car was in motion. "I wanted t' say thank you. It's really nice."

She glances at him with those precious little eyes, the dark brown irises that have always haunted him. They tell him that he's a lot smaller than he thinks. That the universe is a lot bigger than he knows.

"I figured out what ya meant the day before. When you wanted to make sure I knew you all loved me. Why ya had to say it.”

"You did?" he asks, and a crow flies overhead. A gust of wind comes through his cracked window, blowing his hair back from his face. He rolls the window up and it suddenly seems a lot quieter inside the trans-am. The shadows, the shadows, there's so many shadows. They all want to know what he’s thinking.

"Was it because you were scared you were gonna die in that one clap?"

He gives an off-handed shrug to show that the fear of the future, the dread of even _thinking_ about that raid, the panic he felt when he saw all his brothers go down... that none of that ever really bothered him. Like it still doesn't. But that's a lie. It did. It does. He's always scared of one thing or another; it's just that he manages to push his fears to the back of his mind most of the time.

Most of the time. Not now.

"Kind of," he says. "I was more scared that I was gonna die, that we all would, and you weren’t gonna have anyone to take care of you. I tried—” His voice cracks, and he shakes his head. “God, it's hard to talk about this. I hate talking about feelings."

"It's okay, Party Poison."

"I know. It's just hard."

They're quiet for a little while. The past few weeks have been hard on her, too. She returned from the station to find three of her brothers badly wounded, in terrible pain, and severely disappointed at the outcome of the mission. She spent a lot of time by Jet Star’s bedside, observing everything and everyone without speaking much. Probably saw the burning shame eating Party Poison alive from the inside out.

“How come you didn’t get hurt in the clap?” she asks.

“I don’t _know_.” He balls his tapping hand into a fist and lays it to rest on his thigh, keeping a loose grip on the bottom of the wheel with the other hand. “I did everything they did. I fought the whole time. I was in the same warehouse. I had the same amount of protection they did. But nothing happened to me. I feel like it’s—like it’s all my fault.”

“Like what’s your fault?”

“I don't know—like maybe how Jet’s half-blind now! Ghoul’s face is fucked up! Kobra’s arm is broken! What do you _want_ me to say, that I didn’t absolutely screw up three people’s lives forever? That’s not the fucking _truth_!” Poison bangs his fist against the side of the door, hard enough for it to hurt, then abruptly pulls onto the shoulder of the road. He parks and buries his face in his arms. Heat rushes to his cheeks and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s angry or he’s sad. Maybe both.

The amount of hatred, the amount of utter _loathing_ he has for himself right now is overwhelming. All he did was make one stupid fucking decision, but he ruined everything. Three people are suffering because of him and at least two others are going to be affected by it in the long run, too. It’s all his fucking fault. All of it. _He_ caused this.

He chokes back a sob.

The girl unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs over the center console, laying a small hand on his leather-clad shoulder. “Shh,” she tells him, and now that’s really funny; now it’s like she’s his mother or something trying to calm him down, when really, it should be the other way around. It only makes him dissolve into the tears he’s been holding back for weeks.

“Shh,” she repeats. “Gonna be okay.”

 _What’s “gonna be okay”?_ he wants to ask. The guys? No, they’re fucking traumatized and won’t be okay for months, if ever. Him? No way. He’s not going to be okay until he can forgive himself for making the dumbest decision he’s ever made in his lifetime, and that’s not going to be able to happen for years. The situation as a whole? The only way that could be true is if the Phoenix Witch snaps her fingers and sends them all back in time to a month ago.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay to cry. ‘Member what you always say, how it’s fine if I need to cry if I’m hurt or sad? ‘S okay for you, too, Party Poison.”

He draws in a shuddering gasp and just wishes he’d never made that stupid order in the first place. “But I made them go in there. I told them they had to. I bet they hate me. And I deserve it.”

“They don’t blame you. None of ‘em blame you, Party Poison. ‘S all gonna be okay.” She climbs into his lap, somehow managing to squeeze her small frame in between his body and the steering wheel, and wraps her arms around his neck. “You told me you love me no matter what happens. And we all love you no matter what happens with you, if ya mess up or something. We still love you and that’s not gonna change. Promise.”

Poison swipes a hand over his eyes and buries his face in her hair. It smells like the desert air and coconut oil and _her_ , and he can finally start to breathe again.

Her tiny hand finds his bigger one, and he feels her slip one of her bracelets onto his wrist. It’s the beaded one with the dolphin charm on it, one of her favorites, and it fits snugly between a leather cord Kobra gave him years ago and two red hairbands.

“Keep it,” the girl whispers.

“Are you sure?” he says, and he’s not just asking about the bracelet.

“‘M sure,” she says, and she doesn’t let go of him until he murmurs the slightest _“thank you”_ in her ear. Then they drive back to their latest hideout, and he finally forces himself to talk to and apologize to the guys, and it turns out she was right about everything. 

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "lay" by the blue stones.  
> follow me on tumblr @discocritic!


End file.
